Wet labs and hands-on science remain core to research, but one global consulting firm estimates that generative AI could produce up to $28 billion of annual value in drug discovery alone.

“We’re already seeing demand for dry labs rise as big pharma organizations look to upgrade infrastructure,” says Richard Cairnes, JLL’s PDS UK and EMEA Head of Life Sciences. “It might be creating facilities in new countries, with scientists collaborating together via the cloud, or simply adapting existing labs to future proof and complement current research resources.”

Take the UK’s Wellcome Genome Campus, where ongoing development includes large open-plan areas for dry lab work and data analysis alongside dedicated spaces for high-performance computing and AI research. Or Germany’s Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) in Berlin, which has added substantial dry lab space for bioinformatics and computational biology.

While key breakthroughs will still come from human scientists, Gul Dusi, JLL’s Managing Director for PDS Life Science Projects in the U.S., believes that more extensive use of modelling and AI will fundamentally alter laboratory design.

“It affects the overall layout, altering the number of benches, power, server and data connections required, as well as how people move and interact in the lab space,” she says.